I used to work for a mobile robotics company. The company made mobile robots that could propel themselves forward or backward and could turn on a dime. Each robot weighed about 300 pounds and could easily drive up a steep ramp while carrying a 300 pound load. They had power to spare.
Knowing this, the designers were careful. Each robot had two bumpers. One bumper was in the direction of travel when the robot was going forward and the other bumper was "behind" the robot; in other words, it was in the direction of travel when the robot was driving backward. Were the robot to run into something, the bumper would activate an Emergency Stop. Surrounding the robot were large red buttons labeled "E-STOP" (Emergency Stop). It was impossible for the robot to move by itself without human commands for it to move. An onboard Drive Computer had to be fed a path program and then the path program had to be executed by the Drive Computer before the robot could move. Furthermore, the Motor Amplifier which fed power to the drive and steer motors would not function without the Drive Computer having been installed in the robot. There were safety features on top of safety features. I am, of course, talking about a robot that was completely assembled. I am not talking about a robot that was partially assembled or which had some safety features disabled in order to perform certain tests.
We went overboard on making the robot safe. Nevertheless...
One day someone went into a cubicle where a robot was parked. He wanted to drive the robot to another location. So he switched on the key (like you would do in a car) to begin the process of moving the robot. When he switched on the key, the robot instantly became the Beast From Hell. It went forward, backward, sideways, this way, that way, yonder way. It crashed into the cubicle walls, chairs, file cabinets, and everything else in the cubicle. Somehow he (or someone) managed to turn off the robot and stop its rampage. There was no signifcant damage and no one was injured. But it was a memorable moment.
So what happened? As already mentioned, the robot was controlled by an onboard Drive Computer, and that Drive Computer received its instructions from a computer chip called a PROM (Programmable Read Only Memory). This particular robot had a Drive Computer but it did not have a PROM. Therefore, the Drive Computer raced from one empty memory location to the next empty memory location. Without getting overly technical, this racing through empty memory was BAD. It triggered all kinds of random instructions to the Motor Amplifers that controlled the Drive and Steer motors. The robot literally lost its mind.
Moral? You can't be too careful! Even if you think you're being very careful, Nature, Fate, Destiny—call it what you will—will find a way to bite you on the ass. And this brings me to another incident.
There was a teenage couple. The young man wanted to be famous on YouTube. So he asked his girlfriend to shoot him in the chest with a pistol. He held a 1.5 inch thick book in front of his chest. He believed the book would stop the bullet. She didn't want to shoot the gun, but he persuaded her that it was safe and nothing bad would happen. He was wrong. The couple's 3 year old son and nearly 30 onlookers watched as the bullet passed through the book, entered the young man's chest, and killed him.
The girlfriend was pregnant with the couple's second child. Both children lost their father. Their mother served jail time, then home confinement, and can never own a firearm or profit from her story.
We've all tempted Fate now and then, especially in our younger years. You got away with it. I got away with it. Lots of people got away with it. But some people did not. Think before you act. If this stunt goes well, what will I gain? If this stunt goes very bad, what will I lose?
Just like my story about the crazy robot, it's when you think you've covered all your bets that Fate steps in and shows you what can go wrong.
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